This freewheeling city can’t seem to agree if free wireless access to the Internet is such a great idea.
Hoping to break a political impasse, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has submitted a ballot measure asking voters whether they support blanketing the city with a wireless Wi-Fi system that would enable free Web surfing subsidized by ads from Google Inc.
The November ballot measure is nonbinding, so its approval wouldn’t ensure a free Wi-Fi service would be built.
But a thumbs-up would turn up the heat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to finally clear the way for free Wi-Fi – a crusade that Newsom began championing in October 2004 as a way to keep the city on the cutting edge of technology while making it more feasible for poor households to get online.
The supervisors could beat the voters to the punch. A board hearing on the Wi-Fi issue is scheduled in September, raising the possibility it could approve or reject the proposal before voters weigh in.

Meanwhile, here in Seattle, Mayor Greg Nickels has been trying to find a company to build a citywide fiber-optic broadband network that could provide voice, video and data services.

UPDATE: Click “continued reading” for more on both efforts – plus the latest on Seattle’s free Wi-Fi services.

This is the “latest news” on Nickels’ broadband vision, according to the city’s information technology website:

The City concluded its discussions with 10 of the (Request for Interest) respondents in October 2006. We are currently in the process of synthesizing the large amount of information we gathered during this process and conducting additional research. We expect to complete a set of recommendations and next steps in this process by February or March 2007. This information will be presented to the Mayor and City Council for further consideration.

UPDATE: D’Anne Mount, spokeswoman for the city’s info technology department, said that office expects to have a proposal to show the mayor next month. “The research on financial models was just a lot more complicated than we realized,” she said of the delay.

With help from the University of Washington, Seattle offers free Wi-Fi in Columbia City, the University District and four downtown parks, Mount said. (Victor Steinbrueck, Occidental, Westlake and Freeway parks.)

But there’s no talk at City Hall about expanding that.

“It’s not a real reliable technology, it seems,” Mount said. Especially outdoors. “Outside use has been a little bit difficult and not as reliable as we would like.”

Here’s more from the AP on San Fran’s proposal:

The project, one of hundreds of municipal Wi-Fi systems being built or proposed across the country, has bogged down amid concerns about privacy protection, surfing speeds and the terms of the proposed contract.
The agreement, which could run for as long as 16 years, currently calls for EarthLink Inc. to build the Wi-Fi system for an estimated $14 million to $17 million. EarthLink hopes to recoup its costs by charging about $20 per month for Internet access that would be three to four times faster than the free, ad-supported service.
All the political haggling in San Francisco already has given EarthLink enough time to have second thoughts. The Atlanta-based company’s new chief executive, Rolla Huff, recently said he was reviewing the viability of its municipal Wi-Fi projects, including the San Francisco proposal. EarthLink’s rivals and independent analysts also have begun questioning the technical and economic models behind such projects.